Weekly Letter from the Pastor

After months of planning we have arrived at the Carnival weekend. The committee has put together what hopes to be a very exciting weekend with many new attractions, food opportunities, and games for children and adults of all ages. I hope to see everyone there at some point this weekend.

School is off to a good start. We are now well into the beginning of the school year and everyone seems to be happy. All of the changes that we implemented during the course of the summer and over the last year are now in place. I'd like to thank Ms. Wallace and the teachers and the staff for their flexibility, hard work, and commitment to our students.

Our religious education program also kicked off this past week. Although most of the students in the parish, probably now about 75% of them, attended the Academy over the summer we still have some 100 students in the regular religious program on Wednesday afternoons. Mrs. Contino and her wonderful volunteers are certainly making an important contribution to the parish in providing comprehensive faith formation for our children. The seventh and eighth grade Confirmation Program also began last Sunday night. This innovative program that we inaugurated last year has reaped some very positive benefits, and we are looking forward to another successful year as that program continues to grow and to develop. With Mr. Santucci on board we will see a little different aspect to community development and the service projects in that program.

Speaking of Mr. Santucci, you all will have had an opportunity to meet him at Mass this weekend. As you remember he joined us in July and has been carefully developing his program and working along with Mrs. Contino and Mrs. McCahill in learning about our parish community and building upon the many successes of the past. He also assists Mrs. Contino with the development of our faith formation programs and offerings on all levels.

We are now working on the adult Faith formation programs for the year. I hope that you see flyers and advertisements for our series observing the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. This series will provide us with a better understanding of history and an ecumenical outreach to our Lutheran brothers and sisters in understanding what separated us, and more importantly, in what is leading us back to unity. I hope that many of you will have a chance to attend the Reformation series. This will provide us with an opportunity for some real honest and scholarly conversations about the historical background, the content, and context of the Reformation and the ongoing efforts at the reunification of the church and churches now 500 years later.

There's a lot going on here as always at St. Benedict and I look forward to the opportunity to continue to see our programs expand and develop so we will meet the needs and interests of all of our parishioners in our spiritual journey and life of faith. Have a blessed weekend.